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| Electoral Map of the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election |
The Electoral College is basically how the United States of America elects their President every four years. Each of the fifty states and the capital Washington D.C. is assigned a number of electoral votes and in most of these states during the election the Presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in that state wins all of the electoral votes in that state. The exception to this is in the states of Maine and Nebraska, in these states the candidate who wins the states popular vote gets two electoral votes and then the winning candidate of each of the states congressional district gets one electoral vote. Each state assigns a number of electors who have one vote for President and another for the Vice President, sometimes these electors go against the rest and vote for the candidate who did not win the states popular vote they are called faithless electors. Some examples of this are in the 1988 Presidential election the Democratic parties Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen (1921-2006) received one electoral vote from a faithless elector in West Virginia, another example is in the 1912 Presidential election where former President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) won two electoral votes in California from two faithless electors.
With the Electoral College system a Presidential candidate needs to win a minimum of 270 out 538 electoral votes to win the election. This can still happen despite the fact that the candidate may not have won the nation wide popular vote as was the case when in the 2000 Presidential election when then governor of Texas George W. Bush got 47.9% of the popular vote where as the current Vice President at the time Al Gore got 48.4% but lost the Electoral vote 271 to 266. Another problem that can occur is that neither candidate gets the minimum number of electoral votes required to win the election, the only time this has ever happened was in the 1824 Presidential election where then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) got 84 electoral votes, then Senator Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) of Tennessee got 99 electoral votes, the Secretary of the Treasury at the time William H. Crawford (1772-1834) got 41 electoral votes and the Fourth candidate Speaker of the House Henry Clay (1777-1852) of Kentucky got 37. Since none of them got enough electoral votes it went to the House of Representatives to decide (this is what would happen in the 2016 Presidential election) they chose John Quincy Adams who went on to serve one term as President from 1825-1829.
Presidential elections don't have to be this way.
ReplyDeleteBy state laws, without changing anything in the Constitution, The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency, to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by replacing state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of pre-determined outcomes. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of Electoral College votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). The candidate receiving the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) would get all the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.
The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founders. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founders in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. States can, and have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Historically, major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls
in recent or past closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA --75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%;
in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE -74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%;
in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and
in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
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I do agree with your comment somewhat but in most U.S.presidential elections the candidate that has received the most electoral votes has also won the national popular vote
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